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The Everlasting Immortality of Kevin P. Johnson

Skookum Maguire

    The warm morning sun infused Kevin P. Johnson with a feeling of belonging as he maneuvered his garbage truck down a quiet shaded street in the Pacific Northwest town where he’d always lived. It was the Lord’s work he was doing—he knew it was, and he’d already given this day to the Lord, earlier, while brushing his teeth—as he did each day since he’d quit drinking. He contemplated the lost years, as he leapt from the truck to grab an extra bag in front of Old Lady Weithenstahl’s house, something he would not have done a year-and-a-half earlier, prior to his saving. Extra garbage was against company policy, after all.
    But his manager was not a believer, and the company owners were known to revel at late drunken parties. So he picked up the bag as an agent of the Lord, in retribution for the management’s unholy ways.
    Kevin had worked in the mills until the mills shut down, and now he felt lucky to have a job, any kind of job. And local women were attracted to men with jobs, there were so few of them. Especially women with children. But he’d been saved, and was scheduled to meet Harvey Blevins and Sam Whiteside out at the site after work. The three of them had volunteered to build the new chapel, and Brother Mathiason, the acting pastor, had even promised to help. Harvey was a journeyman carpenter—thank the Lord—and Brother Mathiason would probably take over as full-time pastor once the building was completed.
    Kevin couldn’t wait to show the crew his new Skilsaw, though it wasn’t really a Skilsaw, it was a Sears brand circular saw. His Sears charge card was the only way he could buy it, but he was sure it would work just fine.
    After dumping his last garbage can he started back to the transfer station, a route that took him by the Lone Wolf Tavern. In years gone by, Kevin had spent many an hour in the Lone Wolf. Of course, he was above that now. But just as he let off on the fuel for a car slowing to turn in front of him, he noticed a wide-hipped young lady in a short bouncing skirt jiggle her way through the front door of the place, and old urges came back to haunt him.
    He didn’t think of his wife often, the gaunt, bony woman who’d borne his four children—whose approach to sex was “just lie there and take it”—and he didn’t think of her now. But he had trouble forcing visions of the girl from his mind, so he concentrated on scripture to help him.
    When he arrived at the site, Harvey and Sam were already there, putting up batter-boards to line out the foundation. After Kevin parked, while he was removing the tags from his new saw, Brother Mathiason arrived and led the men in prayer. The pastor went through a long litany of folks to thank, but he didn’t just thank them, at least not directly. The way it went was, “Thank you Lord, for providing Joe and Maggie McArthur for donating the land, and thank you Lord, for inspiring Ace Building Supply to furnish us with lumber and nails, and thank you dear Lord, for bringing us Harold C. Rasmussen, such an able attorney, to help us with applications and zone changes and building permits, and thank you Lord, for ...”
    The good brother’s list also included this plea: “And Lord, please help us in our quest to persuade Happy Valley Redi-Mix to provide us with concrete.” Finally, he ended with, “And most especially, Lord, bless our own brothers Harvey, Sam, and Kevin for providing the labor we need to construct your new house, and to put the whole thing into working order.”
    Kevin felt like a million bucks after that. He rose from his knees and went to get the rest of his tools. He felt like a divine source had taken hold of him, inspired him with energy, and was directing the movements of his arms and legs. There were tears in his eyes. He noticed Sam and Harvey were walking slower too, staring at the ground as they went about.
    He was so happy he’d found the Lord. He had a place in the world now; he belonged somewhere for the first time in his life. People actually looked up to him—some people anyway.
    Harvey told the other men if they could get the batter-boards up and the footings marked out, his brother-in-law—who was not a believer, but who owed Harvey money—would come by in the morning with his backhoe and dig out the footings for concrete.
    What that meant was the three of them had to work extra late that night. Brother Mathiason left to run down one of the partners of Happy Valley Redi-Mix, redoubling his efforts to procure the badly needed concrete, while the other men set about their work with a vengeance.
    In spite of the long summer days—additionally bolstered by the insanity of daylight savings—it was starting to get dark by the time Sam and Harvey could mark out footings. They used string lines and orange colored paint.
    Kevin was nailing up the last of the batter-boards, but he let his mind wander just a little, and, while thinking about the girl at the tavern, he smacked his thumb with the hammer. Only a year-and-a-half ago, he would have screamed, “Jesus-Fuckin’-Christ!” and pitched the hammer across the lot in a fit of rage. But now he’d been saved, so he merely shouted, “Ouch!” and put his thumb in his mouth for sucking. He figured the whack on the thumb had been retribution from the Lord for thinking unholy thoughts, and silently thanked his savior for leading him away from temptation.
    Once the batter-boards were up, the men finished marking the footings fairly quickly. Then Kevin began his drive across town, thinking of the warmed-over dinner and the bony wife he knew would be waiting. He had to go back by the Lone Wolf Tavern to get there, though, and his curiosity got the better of him. He stopped briefly, just to see if the girl was still there.
    He hung by the door when he first walked in, knowing he’d have to let his eyes adjust to the dim light before he could make out faces, and he had a plan, of sorts. If someone he knew spotted him, he would go over to them and try to persuade them to see the ways of the Lord. If he did not see anyone he knew he would just seek out the girl to satisfy his own curiosity.
    The girl was not among the patrons at the bar, nor was she to be found sitting at the tables along the outside walls. Fortunately, he didn’t see anyone he knew either and finally decided she’d probably left. After all, several hours had passed since she’d come in. But he felt awkward just standing there, so he turned to the bar to order a short draft beer.
    And there she was.
    She was the barmaid, and he smiled at her when he ordered, drawing a quick smirk back from the girl. She wasn’t beautiful, at least by Hollywood standards. She was tall enough, but her nose was a little crooked, and she was a little overly plump. Yet she did possess those great big wide-apart eyes that always demand male attention.
    To further distract him, the girl had a habit of turning her back on the patrons at the bar while drawing beer from the tap, and she would bounce on her heels while beer foamed into the pitcher. Her rear end shimmied while she did this, under her short pleated skirt, drawing lust-induced stares from the men at the bar; and that kept them ordering pitchers. Kevin could not remember when he’d seen anything quite so tempting
    He was tempted now, and he knew it, so he took a short sip of beer, smiled at the girl when he had her attention, and left with the intention of never coming back.
    The following day he discovered two plastic jugs of used motor oil in a garbage can, and had to call for a supervisor. Motor oil had been classified as hazardous material, and he was forbidden from picking it up. The supervisor came out and took the illicit material, reported the incident to the authorities, and Kevin went on his way. But he was late finishing his route, and late to the building site. Harvey and Sam were forming the tops of the footings that the backhoe had dug earlier in the day.
    They worked late again that night, but before they left, Brother Mathiason came by to confess to having no luck with Happy Valley Redi-Mix.
    “Another day or two, and we’ll be ready for mud,” Harvey announced, disappointed.
    Kevin drove slowly as he passed the Lone Wolf Tavern that night, but he did not stop. Instead, he kept driving, while reciting some long-lost prayer he vaguely remembered about not being “led into temptation.”
    It spite of the fact that his Thursday route took him to the poorest part of town—a place where mobile homes had been erected in the 1950s, before the city council saw fit to ban them—Kevin gave the day to the Lord and went cheerfully about his business. Here, almost every house had an extra box, bag, or bundle, and many customers had not paid their bill in a couple of months. Kevin was required to put a red tag on the trash cans of the non-payers, and he was not supposed to empty them. He tied the red tags to the cans, but he emptied them anyway and he picked up the extra items on the curb.
    It was a long tedious process to gather trash in this part of town, so it was almost noon when he got to the end of K Street—a dead end, where he’d have to back up three times to turn around in a driveway. Once he got going again, he noticed a woman in a bathrobe, pulling a little kid’s wagon full of trash, out to the street. It was a place he was supposed to red-tag. A year-and-a-half ago, he would have driven right on by, pretending not to see the woman. But now he’d been saved, so he stopped to help the lady. When she bent over to take the trash from the wagon, he recognized the girl from the tavern.
    “Startin’ to get hot,” he said, walking up behind her.
    “Yeah,” she nodded, turning to greet him, with no apparent sign of recognition.
    She stood there smiling with her bathrobe open at the neck exposing cleavage, though there wasn’t much really.
    “Your can’s scheduled to be tagged,” he told her.
    “No kidding,” she laughed, turning to look at her backside.
    “Your trash can,” Kevin explained, feeling his face heat up with embarrassment.
    “I don’t get paid until next week,” the girl said, in a kind of pleading tone.
    She had a breathy, musical voice that didn’t stay on the same note all the time. It wandered some, like the high notes of an accordion.
    “I can empty it today,” Kevin told her, “but next week I’ll be in kind of a spot.”
    “I’ll try to get it paid,” she said, as Kevin threw the extra trash into the truck’s compactor.
    He emptied her can and began rolling it back to the house for her. “I know where you work,” he said.
    “You’ve been in?” she asked.
    “Once.”
    “So many faces,” she told him, by way of explanation.
    “Yeah,” he said. “I can imagine.”
    Two little toddlers, both blond with long hair—a boy and a girl—burst from the door of the mobile and ran down the driveway to meet them. Kevin’s youngest boy was in the eighth grade now; all he could think of when he saw the two of them was diapers.
    “Cute kids,” he said.
    “They keep me hopping.”
    “Husband?” he asked.
    She shook her head.
    He was a little late getting to the site again that night, and by the time he arrived, Brother Mathiason was already there.
    “Happy Valley Redi-Mix has agreed to furnish us concrete for cost,” Kevin heard the acting pastor say, as he walked up behind the group. “That’s the best they can do. We’ll have to pay the balance out of our meager building fund.”
    It wasn’t a happy occasion, but it could have been worse, so each man acknowledged, in his own way, that “the Lord works in mysterious ways,” knelt for Brother Mathiason’s daily prayer, and went on about their business.
    Kevin could not get the girl off his mind, as he helped with the forms for the footings, taking extra precaution not to hit his fingers with the hammer. At one point he stopped for a moment with a sixteen-penny duplex nail half driven and remembered—in a state of momentary frustration—he’d forgotten to ask for her name.
     When they were almost completed, Harvey went to his cell phone to call Brother Mathiason. He needed to know where they were going to get the rebar, and he came back a few moments later with a puzzled expression on his face to announce, “Brother Mathiason doesn’t know what rebar is.”
    The men knocked off a little early, to allow their pastor time to struggle with the concept of rebar, and Kevin stopped again at the Lone Wolf Tavern.
    He walked in just as the girl was drawing a pitcher of beer, and made his way to a stool to watch. She smiled when she saw him; he ordered a short draft, and when she brought it to him he asked, “What is your name, anyway?”
    “Gabriella,” she told him; she smiled again.
    He smiled back and took a small sip of beer. Then he started to get nervous and downed half the glass. When he had the girl’s attention again, he saluted her, and got up and left. The rest of the way home, Kevin wondered what had gotten into him and he recited scripture out loud to dispel the demons.
    His Friday route was adjacent to his Thursday route, which brought him within a few blocks of Gabriella’s house just before noon. He decided to drive by. If anyone noticed him, he could always say he’d remembered a can he’d missed from the day before.
    When he went by, she was out in the front yard in a tank top and shorts. She was pulling a hose around from the back of the house.
    He waved; she waved back.
    He went down, turned around, and when he came back she was bent over, trying to adjust a portable rain-bird sprinkler.
    He nearly ran up on the sidewalk, before she straightened up to wave again.
    They worked late again, but they were behind schedule because at the very last minute Brother Mathiason decided to wait to dip into the meager building fund for rebar, causing it to be delivered late. Kevin knew better than to go into a tavern on a Friday night, so he forced himself to go straight home.
    The next day was Saturday and the three men had all day to work on the church. They completed the forms for the footings, but their deal with Happy Valley did not include deliveries on overtime so Kevin and Sam started assembling forms for the stem-walls from plywood. “We’re doing this all out of sequence,” Harvey complained.
    Sunday was a day of rest, so nothing was done on the new church, and all three men attended services at the local Methodist Church, where arrangements had been made to use the building after two o’clock in the afternoon each week. Brother Mathiason’s sermon was all about “giving,” aimed primarily at soliciting additional donations for the struggling building fund—and at the end of it all, he went into a long and deeply emotionalized spiel about the thankless services being provided to the congregation by the three men building the new church. “Men from our own flock are doing this work,” he said, wagging his head back and forth like he could hardly believe it himself.
    “Let’s all give our heartfelt thanks to the Lord,” he said, “for the unselfish labor being provided by Harvey Blevins, Sam Whiteside, and Kevin Johnson. In the name of the Lord Almighty, let us pray.”
    The entire congregation dropped to their knees and began mumbling along with Brother Mathiason, until he finally raised his voice to announce, in an emotionally charged crescendo, “... And in the name of the Lord, amen.”
    After the services, Kevin wandered into the courtyard in a vacant trance, as people began to spill from the church. Folks came up to him—one at a time, and in groups—to shake his hand and tell him how proud they were of him, and how thankful they were for all he was doing. It made him feel like doing more, if only he could think of something more to do.
    After a long conversation with an old man who used to “work construction,” and who “wished he were young enough to help,” Kevin found his bony wife and three of his children. The oldest boy refused to participate in the family’s new-found conversion, a source of deep frustration to Kevin.
    The five of them wandered out onto the sidewalk where they engaged in a family hug for the entire flock to see. Then they walked slowly to his wife’s old four-door Oldsmobile. The adults, now with tears in their eyes, didn’t seem to notice as the youngest boy threw a water balloon at his sister; then they all drove slowly and deliberately away.
    The route from the Methodist Church to his small tract home on the south side of town didn’t take Kevin anywhere near the Lone Wolf Tavern, so he had no trouble keeping his mind on things like salvation, forgiveness, building the church, and the more important aspects of living. He didn’t think of the girl again one time, until the following morning, just before he gave the day to the Lord while shaving. At which point he remembered he had to drive by the tavern on his way to the transfer station.
    Out at the building site, Harvey and his crew had come up against a kind of conundrum. They only had about an hour each day to pour concrete before the Happy Valley drivers went on overtime, so they had to pour the footings in little short runs.
    “This is not good,” Harvey explained to Sam and Kevin. “We’re going to end up with too many cold joints. Besides that, it’ll take forever to do it this way.”
    The men agreed to try to get off work the following day so they could pour the remaining footings all at one time, so Kevin called his dispatcher. Before his salvation, he would merely have called in sick, but of course, he couldn’t do that now. It wouldn’t be honest.
    The dispatcher was not agreeable at first, but he finally relented with the parting words, “I hope this doesn’t become a habit.”
    The men had the footings poured by early afternoon, and went back to building sections of the forms for the stem-walls. By five o’clock they were beat and decided to knock off. “We’re not gettin’ much of anything done anyway,” Harvey admitted to his friends.
    It was still daylight, so Kevin decided not to stop at the tavern—anybody driving by would see his pickup—but after passing it slowly, he turned, went halfway around the block and parked in the lot of a stationery store behind the building. He then walked down the alley and slipped around through the front door of the tavern.
    “You’re early,” Gabriella greeted him, like he was one of the regular customers.
    “I took the day off,” he told her, “to work on the church.”
    “The church?” she asked, laughing, rolling her eyes.
    He got a little worked up as he watched her pour several pitchers of beer. Then, when he had her attention again, he waved to her and left.
    The following Thursday he noticed her garbage can still displayed a red tag, so he got out of the truck to inspect if for trash. It was full, and he stood on the curb for a moment, wondering if there was any way his dispatcher would know if he emptied it anyway. Then she walked up behind him.
    “I think I can pay the bill next week,” he heard her melodious voice say, and turned to greet it.
    “I’ll just pay it,” he said. “Sometimes the dispatcher follows us around to inspect red-tagged cans. If they’re empty when he looks at them, we hear about it.” It was only twenty-eight dollars.
    “I can’t let you do that,” she protested.
    “You can pay me back.”
    And that’s when she began to cry.
    “What’s wrong?” Kevin asked, beginning to panic.
    “Oh, I don’t want to bother you with my problems,” she blubbered.
    “B-but ...” he stammered.
    “My mother-in-law took my kids,” Gabriella wailed.
    “I thought you didn’t have a husband.”
    “I have an ex-husband,” she barked, and the tears dried up as her pretty face turned angry.
    “But ...” he stammered again.
    “I had to fill in for the day girl for an hour or so yesterday. I thought the kids would be all right, for just that long—I couldn’t get a babysitter anyway—who could I get? Anyway, I’ve got snoopy neighbors, and Marlene found out about it. She called Children’s Protective Services; they called the cops, and the authorities came by and took Brenda and Billy. They gave temporary custody of my kids to Marlene.”
    “I take it Marlene is your mother-in-law.”
    Gabriella nodded.
    They stood there for a moment. He knew she was vulnerable, and he’d never wanted anything so bad is his life. He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug; she didn’t try to pull away. “Maybe it will all blow over,” he said.
    “You don’t know Marlene.”
    He hugged her again.
    Finally, she said, “Come in and have a glass of iced tea with me.”
    “I’ve got to finish my route,” he complained, knowing he was behind schedule now, and knowing, too, he wanted to go inside with her in the very worst way.
    “Just for a minute,” she said. “I’m lonely.”
    He followed her through the door of the small mobile home, and following her made him lose concern for his route.
    “Would you rather have a beer?” she asked.
    “I’m driving a garbage truck,” he protested. “How could I drink a beer?”
    He sat on her little hard couch. She brought him a glass of iced tea, but she opened a beer for herself. And as he began to sip at the drink, she sat down beside him and put her hand on his shoulder.
    “Garbage men have such strong shoulders,” she said, and she moved a little closer.
    “We do all the work with machines, now,” he explained.
    “I know, but from before.”
    He pulled her head over to his chest, to smell the fragrance of her hair—it didn’t smell of shampoo or hairspray; it emitted the real earthy, tantalizing odor of female pheromone. He reached his hand up to stroke it.
    Then he turned her head up, and pulled her lips to his face. She didn’t resist.
    He knew he was a goner—nothing but Gabriella mattered at all to him. In another few moments, they were in the bedroom with their clothes off.
    Gabriella was total energy between the sheets—a real live wire—it was like merging with a lightning bolt. It was an experience Kevin had not had since before his marriage—well, maybe a few times since, before he’d been saved—but nothing like this, really, never.
    Her flesh was soft and warm; it shimmied as she moved under him. When they traded positions, she went down deep—deep—her flesh was alive, so alive and giving.
    It ended with a crescendo of moans and shivers, until all either one of them could do was lie on the bed and pant.
    When he could talk again, Kevin said, “I’m way behind schedule.”
    “You’re timing seemed pretty good to me,” Gabriella smirked.
    He rushed through the rest of his route, but he was late getting to the building site. Harvey and Sam were striping forms from the footings. Then they began to erect the forms for the stem-walls, and the men worked until well after dark to make up for lost time.
    Kevin hurried home, after that, quoting scripture to himself all the way, wondering what he was ever going to do to atone to the Lord for what he’d done with Gabriella.
    But by the end of the week, old urges got the better of him once more, and his life became a treadmill—rushing through his route each day to work on the church, stopping at Gabriella’s house on Thursdays, and cutting over to do the same thing on Friday. Parking in the empty lot of the stationery store each night to slip down the alley to get another glimpse of her, and then sitting in his favorite pew each Sunday afternoon while Brother Mathiason heaped praise on him and his fellow workers, only to be paid compliments by other members of the flock after the services.
    It didn’t take long for an element of guilt to set in. First, he had trouble facing the folks in the courtyard. He quit having a physical relationship with his wife at night—always a kind of hit-and-miss proposition anyway—and he quit talking to his oldest son, who had now taken up smoking. To make matters worse, every time he closed his eyes to quote scripture in an effort to escape the persecution of it all, all he could envision was the flesh of Gabriella’s sexy backside jiggling up and down under her short pleated skirt.
    It went on like this for week after week, until late one night she called him at home. His wife answered the phone; then turned, with a questioning look on her face, to say, “It’s for you.”
    “Kevin, I’m pregnant,” Gabriella gushed out, in a loud, gaspy whisper—he could hear laughter and voices in the tavern behind her. “I need money for an abortion.”
    “But you can’t ...” Kevin started to say. Then, remembering where he was and who was listening, he replied, “I’ll look into it the first thing in the morning. I’ll call you.”
    “My phone’s been cut off,” she told him.
    “I’ll come in early,” he told her, and hung up.
    He turned to the imploring look on the bony face of his wife and explained, “They think somebody’s taking kick-backs.” It was a problem that came up from time to time with garbage men. A customer would have an old couch or a worn out carpet they’d want to throw away, and they’d pay the garbage man twenty bucks to take it. Sometimes a desperate driver would take the trash and keep the money. Once word got out that a driver would do that, everybody on the block seemed to have something to get rid of. Suddenly, the volume of refuse the company had to handle at the landfill would skyrocket, but the revenue stayed the same.
    “But who was that on the phone?” his wife wanted to know. “I know all the girls who work there, and that didn’t—”
    “It’s a new girl,” Kevin cut her off. “They told us she was a new hire, but she probably really works for the auditors. They’ve been known to do that, you know. Remember when they caught ol’ Harry Stapleton?”
    “Why would she call you here—and so late?”
    “That’s what they do,” he said. “Call around, get the fellas worked up, find somebody who knows something, and then try to get them to spill the beans.”
    The following morning, he went in early. Drivers were not suppose to start picking up garbage until 6:30 am, to give customers a chance to get their cans out to the curb, but some of the guys always came in early and went to Jack’s Truck Stop for breakfast. Kevin would join them from time to time, but not this morning. This morning he had important things on his mind. He didn’t go to Jack’s and he didn’t go out on his route—instead, he went to Gabriella’s.
    He had trouble waking her; she’d only been off work for a few hours, but when he finally got her to let him in, he found a warm bed and a willing participant.
    “I must have screwed up on my pills,” she explained, as they lay spent on the mattress.
    “An abortion isn’t the answer,” he told her.
    “What is the answer?”
    “You can’t just kill one of God’s children,” he said, feeling anger rise in his body, knowing what Brother Mathiason would say.
    “Right now,” she told him, “it’s not even a tadpole. What will happen if I don’t do something? Are you going to get a divorce and support me and the baby?”
    “A divorce?” he howled.
    “Besides, if I show up pregnant now, I’ll never get my kids back.”
    Kevin left Gabriella’s mobile home with the weight of the world on his shoulders. For a while, he dreamed of divorcing his wife and spending a carefree existence with Gabriella. But he knew things would not be carefree—she had kids of her own—and there were his children to think about.
    Finally, after working on the church until well after dark, he stopped by the Lone Wolf Tavern, ordered a short draft, and when he could catch Gabriella’s attention again, he asked, “How much would it cost?”
    “About six hundred and fifty dollars,” she told him.
    He whistled.
    She looked at him expectantly.
    Finally he took a quick nip of beer, told her, “I’ll see what I can do,” and left.
    Kevin had two choices. He had a credit card with a pin number that would let him borrow two hundred dollars per transaction through an ATM machine, or he could borrow the money from the credit union. Neither was a good option. His wife would have to sign for a loan at the credit union, and the credit card company would send out monthly statements which would go directly to his house.
    What he came up with was this: The following day he went to the post office and purchased a box for six months. He put it in the name of K. Peter Johnson, feeling the name was more biblical. Then he found an old statement from the credit card company, sent it in with the minimum payment, and changed his mailing address over to the post-office box.
    The following day was Thursday, so when he rolled around to Gabriella’s he told her he’d have the money in three or four days.
    She didn’t seem overjoyed about waiting that long, but told him, “I’ll make an appointment.”
    The next day, Friday, when he detoured over to Gabriella’s house, she wasn’t home. He didn’t stop at the Lone Wolf that night, and on Saturday, he worked all day at the church. They were putting up roof trusses—the building was starting to look like something.
    He’d been looking forward to Sunday all week; he needed to get his thoughts straight. And while Brother Mathiason railed on about cryptic predictions in the Bible, making a case for the essence of Israel, Kevin was silently asking the Lord to forgive him for his affair with Gabriella, for straying from his wife and children, and more importantly, for participating in the girl’s abortion. Tears came to his eyes when he mumbled under his breath about the abortion.
    When it was over, he strolled out into the bright afternoon sunshine, to greet other members of the flock who all praised him and thanked the lord for sending him to help with the new church. And by the time he was on his way home, he felt like a new man, ready to move forward in the world—praise be to the Lord.
    His account at the bank cycled every 24 hours—but it did not cycle on Sunday—so it was Monday night by the time he had the money, and he stopped by the tavern to present the cash to Gabriella.
    Even though he was smiling and friendly, she seemed kind of snooty when he pushed the envelope of cash across the bar. “I’ll let you know,” she told him, and then turned to draw a pitcher for a group of young men at the bar, who whooped and punched each other with their elbows as they watched her.
    The church was coming along swimmingly now. Brother Mathiason had gotten a large donation from an elderly woman in the congregation who, he told the men, “The good Lord just happened to send our way.”
    But Kevin had not heard from Gabriella. So on the following Thursday he stopped by. The red tag was off of her trash can—he had paid the bill, after all—but she wasn’t out in the yard. He emptied the can, and then went to the door of the little mobile to knock. He waited a few moments, and was about to turn to leave, when he heard someone coming. The door opened, and as Gabriella stood there in her bathrobe he could see a larger figure behind her.
    She came out and pulled the door shut. Then she told him, “I’ve decided to make a new start with Randy ...”
    He didn’t know who Randy was; he didn’t need to. He simply muttered the words, “But I thought ...”
    “Look, Kevin,” she said, “Randy doesn’t know anything about us. He isn’t married. Well, he was married, but he got a divorce. If I’m ever going to get my kids back, I need to ...”
    He got the picture. It wasn’t a development he was particularly fond of, but ... He stood for a moment, then wished her luck and bent forward to kiss her forehead.
    She pulled back.
    He could feel the eyes of the other man on his back as strode back down the driveway to the truck. He scanned the little mobile on his way back down the street, in hopes of getting another glimpse of her. For the rest of the day and well into the night, Kevin thought rejection from Gabriella must be retribution for all he had done to strain the Lord’s trust in him. And knowing this to be true, he mumbled prayers as he drove, and hummed hymns while jumping in and out of the truck to pick up extra bags and boxes. He recited scripture aloud with the window rolled down on the highway going back to the transfer station.
    On Sunday, while Brother Mathiason was thanking this person or that person for being motivated by the lord to donate money to the building fund, Kevin was on his knees thanking the Lord for keeping the affair from his wife, for helping him see his way out of the dilemma, for not striking him dead for giving Gabriella money for an abortion, for providing him with a church to build as a way of paying the Lord back for all the favors he’d been shown, for ...
    The only thing left for Kevin to worry about now was paying off the credit card without his wife finding out. His original plan was to tell her he’d purchased something to help with the church, but that would never work. She would wonder why he hadn’t made the contribution up front, so Brother Mathiason could give him credit, publicly, in front of the flock.
    And that’s when he began to take kick-backs.
    It started one morning when an old man on his Tuesday route offered him fifty dollars to haul off an old overstuffed chair. Then, the following day, some teenaged kids in the ritzy part of town wanted him to dispose of ten cases of empty beer bottles before their parents got home from vacation. At this rate, he could get the credit card paid back in no time; and, as soon as it was, he could quit taking kick-backs. Then he could change his credit card mailing address back to the house, and his wife would never be the wiser.
    But in order to stay straight with the world he had to continually ask for the Lord’s forgiveness for taking the kick-backs. He felt he had to do this each Sunday afternoon, during Brother Mathiason’s sermon. That way, he thought, everything would come out in the end.
    And although he didn’t want to, he had to start leaving some of the extra bags and boxes on the curb. He couldn’t let his overall volume increase, which would prompt the management so suspect him of taking those kick-backs. He felt so fortunate that the Lord had inspired him to start picking up all of the extra things early on; that way, he had room to take the kick-back items without causing his truck’s gross weight to increase at the scales.
    But there were no kick-back customers on his Thursday route, the poorest part of town where Gabriella lived. Of course there were a lot of extra bags and boxes. When he came to her house, he looked longingly at the mobile home door which was closed to him now. But he went on about his business, knowing the good Lord was punishing him for what he’d done, and knowing, like Job, he simply had to learn to deal with it.
    When her bill came due again, he paid it, though he didn’t know why, and he didn’t even feel particularly good about himself for doing it.
    The new church was going up by leaps and bounds now. They were finishing the outside, and were about to tackle the long, laborious chore of completing the inside. Harvey told Kevin and Sam, “In another six to eight weeks we’ll be able to get a certificate of occupancy from the county.” And shortly after that, Brother Mathiason could move his flock into the new building for services.
    So life was good. By the first of August, Kevin figured he’d have the credit card paid off; then he could drop the post-office box. After that, he could bask in the glory of having members of the flock come up to him each Sunday afternoon and feel totally gleeful about accepting their thanks and praise. That would go on until the new church was completed, and maybe even for a few weeks after that, and ...
    But it was Thursday again, and he was working to keep Gabriella off his mind. Then, in an instant, a bunch of teenagers dashed out into the crosswalk in front of him against the light on Seventh Street. He had to stop, hard, partway into the intersection; the light changed and he was stuck there. And while he was waiting for a chance to go again, he looked around at a part of town he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to lately. And that’s when he caught the glimpse of a busty young redhead, bouncing her way through the front door of the Sportsman’s Lounge and Grill.
    Kevin remembered the Sportsman’s. He’d spent many an hour in there before he’d been saved. Of course, all of that was behind him now, but...

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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of cc&d magazine. Saddle-stitched issues are no longer printed, but you can requesting it “re-released” through amazon sale as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.

This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of cc&d magazine.
Saddle-stitched issues are no longer
printed, but you can requesting it
“re-released” through amazon sale
as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book!
Email us for re-release to order.